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Guns More Often Used For Self Defense, Not Crime

August 6, 2018

Credit: Shutterstock

The Center for Disease Control is not know for being friendly to gun owners, however recently released data shows that Americans overwhelmingly use guns for self-defense more than they use them for crimes.

This may be news to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, but it’s not surprising to the rest of the country.

There, in conjunction with the National Research Council, the CDC concluded that almost all national, comprehensive studies on the subject find that firearms are used for lawful defensive purposes between 500,000 and 3.5 million times every year in the United States.

Even assuming that the actual number of defensive uses is on the low end of that range (and there’s good reason to believe that, in fact, it falls at the higher end), firearms are used to protect life and property more often than they are used to commit crimes, according to the CDC.

The month of June 2018 provided ample evidence of just how valuable a firearm can be in the hands of a law-abiding citizen.

A cursory review of news stories from that month reveals the following:

On June 1, a concealed carry permit holder in Cape Coral, Florida, shot a convicted felon who had pulled a firearm on employees of a roofing company. Police said the unnamed good Samaritan acted in self-defense and will not face criminal charges, while the convicted felon—who was legally prohibited from possessing a firearm—will be charged with aggravated assault.

On June 22, a Virginia woman successfully used her firearm to defend her 14-year-old daughter against a knife-wielding would-be kidnapper who had flown to the United States from New Zealand as part of a “carefully planned trip.” The New Zealand man was also carrying pepper spray and duct tape when he used a landscaping brick to smash a glass door, only to be confronted by the teen’s better-armed (and presumable very angry) mother.

On June 30, a Tennessee teenager used her father’s shotgun to ward off a would-be burglar who approached the front door after stealing two pressure washers from the driveway.

As these stories demonstrate, lawful gun ownership can often mean the difference between a “victim” and a “would-be victim.” This is also consistent with the CDC’s conclusion that “[s]tudies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive gun uses have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other strategies.” There are, of course, individuals who would use firearms to commit heinous criminal acts. But the proper response to this reality is not the wholesale stripping of constitutional rights from otherwise law-abiding citizens, or the prohibition of entire classes of firearms commonly used by those law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.

That framework of broad gun control makes no one safer–least of all the brave citizens highlighted above.